Chaplains and Staff

Rev. Susan Field has served NYU as the Baptist Chaplain since 1991, and as the Protestant Chaplain since 2006. She also serves as Baptist Religious Life Advisor for the Baptist Campus Ministry at Columbia, and as the New York City Coordinator for Baptist Collegiate Ministry. She graduated from Emory University, and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. There will be regularly scheduled Protestant Worship services monthly during the Academic year.

Contact: susan.field@nyu.edu or protestant@nyu.edu 

Rabbi Sarna serves as a University Chaplain for NYU and Rabbi of the Bronfman Center, which he joined in 2002. A teacher, innovator and communal leader, Rabbi Sarna was awarded the Richard M. Joel Exemplar of Excellence from Hillel International in 2008, and was listed as one of "36-under-36 Changemakers" by the Jewish Week in 2009. He is married to Dr. Michelle Waldman Sarna, a psychologist, and they live in Gramercy with their five children, Batya, Maayan, Moshe, David and Amital.

Contact: rabbi.sarna@nyu.edu // 212-998-4120

The Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU
7 E. 10th Street

The Kosher Eatery, Weinstein Hall
5-11 University Place

David Rittberg, Executive Director 

John McGuire, O.P., Director of the Catholic Center at NYU is

is a member of the Dominican Order and a native New Yorker. After attending Providence College, he spent five years as a Trappist monk but then felt he was called to a ministry more directly involved with people. Following ordination and the completion of a Master of Divinity and a Master of Philosophy, he did his doctoral work in Ecumenical Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome (The Angelicum). Father John's ministries have included being Director of the International Ecumenical Center at Coventry Cathedral in England. In this capacity, he was the first Roman Catholic priest employed by the Anglican Church. While a research fellow at Yale's Divinity School, he was pastor of St. Mary's Church at Yale and remains a fellow of the University's Jonathan Edwards College. He was then elected Vice-Rector of the Angelicum, a position he held for ten years.

Father John accepted the position of Director of NYU's campus ministry in 1995 as an opportunity to engage again in direct ministry to students. NYU's 18,000 Catholic students present him with this possibility. Fr. McGuire has also led numerous retreats for students, laity, and clergy (Catholic, Anglican and Protestant) in the United States, Italy, England and Ireland. He is also the author of numerous articles on ecumenical and spirituality topics.

Contact: Phone 212-741-1274

371 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10014

In 2005, Khalid Latif was appointed as the first Muslim chaplain at NYU where he began to initiate his vision for a pluralistic future on and off campus for American Muslims. Under his leadership, the Islamic Center at NYU became the first ever fully established Muslim student center at an institution of higher education in the United States. Imam Latif’s exceptional dedication and ability to cross interfaith and cultural lines on a daily basis brought him recognition throughout the city, so much so that in 2007 Mayor Michael Bloomberg nominated Imam Latif to become the youngest chaplain in history of the New York City Police Department at the age of 24.

Please visit the Islamic Center at NYU website for more information on daily and Friday prayer services, classes and seminars, and an array of social, professional, and political programs. 

Marcella Runell Hall is the Associate Director for the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs at New York University and oversees the Center for Spiritual Life. She has taught courses on Spirituality and Social Justice Education, and served as an education fellow and Assistant Director of Religion & Diversity Education at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, as well as a founding board member of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn.

While a full-time administrator at NYU, Marcella is completing her doctorate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her dissertation is entitled, "Education in a Hip-Hop Nation: Our Identity, Politics & Pedagogy."

Marcella co-edited 2 critically acclaimed books "Conscious Women Rock the Page: Using Hip-Hop Fiction to Incite Social Change" (2008) and the "Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume 1" (2007), wrote a best-selling book for Scholastic, "Ten Most Influential Hip-Hop Artists" (2008), published over twenty additional articles and book chapters on Islamaphobia, motherhood, education equity issues and Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy; and freelanced for VIBE and the New York Times Learning Network. Marcella is currently adjunct faculty in the Steinhardt School of Education at NYU, and has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses at UMass Amherst, Bank Street College of Education and Upward Bound, winning two teaching awards; she has also served as Director of Education for the Hip-Hop Association.

Currently, at NYU, Marcella co-created and manages the nationally recognized Intergroup Dialogue program, the award-winning Hip-Hop and Pedagogy Initiative. She has reinstituted Future Administrators Cultural Training Seminar, created the Administrator Cultural Training Seminar, as well as other programming for graduate students of color. National awards and recognition include the Association of American Colleges and Universities 2009 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award and the Brooklyn Borough Presidents Racial Unity Citation.

Marcella holds a Bachelors Degree in Social Work from Ramapo College for New Jersey, and an MA in Higher Education Administration from New York University.